Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Storying Social
Movement/s
Edited by
Louise Gwenneth Phillips
Tracey Bunda
Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education,
the Arts and the Social Sciences
Series Editors
Alexandra Lasczik
Faculty of Education
Southern Cross University
Bilinga, QLD, Australia
Rita L. Irwin
Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
This series is a new and innovative proposition in the nascent and growing
space of movement studies. Emerging and established scholars who are
beginning to work within the contemporary practices and methods of
movement, seek resources such as this series seeks to provide. Education is
very much tied up within an awareness of space and place, for example, a
school can begin to take on an identity of its own, with as much learning
taking place within its corridors and playgrounds as occurs in the class-
rooms. As learners interact with these environments through movement it
is essential for researchers to understand how these experiences can be
understood, allowing for a very interdisciplinary approach. This series spe-
cifically explores a range of movement approaches, including but not lim-
ited to walking research, a relatively new and exciting field, along with
several other paradigmic lenses. The series will be commissioning in the
Palgrave Pivot format.
Louise Gwenneth Phillips • Tracey Bunda
Editors
Storying Social
Movement/s
Editors
Louise Gwenneth Phillips Tracey Bunda
Faculty of Education Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Southern Cross University Studies Unit
Bilinga, QLD, Australia University of Queensland
St Lucia, QLD, Australia
Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences
ISBN 978-3-031-09666-2 ISBN 978-3-031-09667-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09667-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
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To all activists who were, are and will be, for they teach and move many.
Foreword
Scholar activists need to write about our concerns, and the most powerful
way to express ourselves is through our writings. Writing is a way to empower
us, to state that we are not victims and that we are attempting to find answers
and to solve problems. (Devon Abbott Mihesuah, P. 23)
vii
viii Foreword
differences presented in their stories and in their activism, there are also
similarities. Their collective work offers a greater understanding of scholar
activists and demonstrates how much the role of activist is central to who
they are as people, and the core of their very being. I am in awe!
Reference
Mihesuah, D. A. (2003). Indigenous American women: Decolonization, empower-
ment, activism (1st ed.). Nebraska Press.
Standing Foreword
What does it mean to stand up, stand against, stand with and stand for
some-thing in this moment we find ourselves? What does it mean to be
one who stands, one who under-stands, one who can with-stand and one
who takes a stand? The stories in this book stand. They stand strong, they
stand proud, they stand tall and they stand together—standing, anything
becomes possible. These stories of standing are stories that we rarely hear.
They are stories that we need to hear—over and over again, until we have
heard them. Standing, stories sneak up on truths we barely understand as
we try to figure them out in order to make a cruel world a more just and
bearable place. Standing, stories tell their own truths in their own way and
those speaking the stories are never left standing on their own.
My maternal grandmother’s family were coal miners in Cornwall,
women who remained standing long after their husband’s shoes were
placed on the kitchen table. Still today, there is an unwritten rule in my
house that new shoes are never to be stood on a table anywhere in the
house, not least of all the kitchen. I asked my Mum recently where this
custom had come from and she very proudly explained, “Well, it’s all to
do with your great grandfather, he was a Union man and a delegate to
boot”. I wish I knew more about my great grandfather—and my great
grandmother, the story is that she too stood for justice but by standing by,
with, for and up for the rights of women workers. This little-known story
of standing stands strong in the blood and bones of my memory. It has
stood the test of time and has often return to stand beside me in in my
own work as a Unionist feminist in the National Tertiary Education Union
(NTEU) of Australia. Standing: refusing to be a bystander even though
ix
x Standing Foreword
you know the work is hard and your feet are going to hurt. Standing:
holding your ground and position in places where the might and right of
power and privilege push you right onto the edges of fear and precarity.
Standing: an ethical and performative activist force which is not willing to
keep on going with the flow, regardless of the risk. Standing: with a mega-
phone in your hand and heart negotiating the right to speak to make sure
that others can. Standing: making a call and making a claim to something
because standing there in that moment matters in ways we can only begin
to imagine. Standing: because not standing is not standing at all—if some-
one is going to put my work boots on the kitchen table, I want them to
hear and hold right down to their blood and bones that right to the very
end I remained standing.
Stories of activism stand with courage and encourage others to tell their
own. Stories of activism stand with moral conviction and move us to think
and wonder about what living a more ethical life might be and become.
Stories of activism stand so powerfully, as Dorothy Allison suggests, they
will have to be heard, understood and acted upon (p. 177). Standing with
arms open wide, the stories of activism shared here provide us with a
moment to hear them, honor them and hold them with hope for what
might come to happen in the world, standing.
Reference
Allison, D. (1994). Skin: Talking about sex, class and literature. Firebrand Books.
Preface
Once again, Tracey and Louise are storying. We, however, gather together
with others for storying.
But before we write of this gathered-together storying with others, we
locate ourselves, taking up the Indigenous Australian cultural/relational
practise of acknowledging country and people. We stand on ceremony
(Wilson, 2008).
xi
xii Preface
spaces of being widely unknown, new and experienced writers, and from
places where the voices of their movement experiences have been muted
and sometimes silenced. And in the memory of bell hooks, this location—
the margins—is a site of radical possibility (hooks, 2015). The majority of
contributors in this book are not scholars but rather live their lives at a
distance from the academy, in worlds where their every day is a theoretical
practice—analysing the need of the world to be different, conceptualising
how this can be so, delving deeper through methodologies that decon-
struct, disrupt and by making reference to others to find the right ‘ah-ha,
yes this will work’ solutions. Theoretical lives are stories and all of the
stories in the book form and inform a place where our voices collect, shift-
ing to stand with each other, where we are moving/writing together. The
stories in the book speak of resistance for protecting the earth and coun-
try; that in creating space for those who are voiceless and powerless there
is creative intercept; in thinking deeply about being through an ethically
just care practice and how the choreographing of stories in dance main-
tains traditions for next generations. We propose that through the varied
contributions from Indigenous, youth, and diverse identities and commu-
nities in the following chapters, we gain insight into how on-the-ground
movements work to produce change through story. Story and movement,
we acknowledge, are never far from each other.
References
hooks, b. (2015). Feminist theory: From margin to centre. South End Press.
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood
Publishing.
Contents
1 Storying:
The Vitality of Social Movements 1
Tracey Bunda and Louise Gwenneth Phillips
2 Learning
with Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta Activism 19
Simone Tur
3 How
Breaking the Rules Is Changing the World 47
Ella Simons
4 Kooriography:
Revolutionary Acts of Dance 61
Mariaa Randall
5 Brotherhood
of the Wordless: Voiceless Wonders 79
Alice Owen
6 Always
Pull Your People Up with You: The Liworaji
Aboriginal Corporation 99
Lilly Davidson and Maria Davidson
7 Developing
an Individuated Sensibility at the Margins117
Agli Zavros-Orr
Index147
xiii
Notes on Contributors
xv
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Mariaa Randall belongs to the Bundjalung and Yaegl people of the Far
North Coast of NSW. She resides on the lands of the Djadjawurung in
Bendigo and works extensively on Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung coun-
tries in Melbourne. Mariaa is a 1997 NAISDA Dance College Graduate
and the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, obtaining
a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Arts Management, Graduate
Diploma in Performance Creation and a Master in Animateuring (by
Research).
Ella Simons is a 15-year-old school strike for climate (SS4C) organizers
based on Yalukit Willam land in so-called Melbourne. She helped organize
the most recent student strikes for climate action in Melbourne and con-
tinues organizing the movement on a local and national level. Ella has
been organizing with SS4C since the 2019 election, which for her was a
turning point in the urgency for climate action and the need for the youth
activist movement to step up. From a young age, Ella has always loved the
outdoors and visiting her grandparents.
Simone Tur is an Associate Professor, from the Anangu community in
north-west South Australia and resides on Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide. She is
the inaugural Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous) at Flinders University.
Her previous leadership roles in higher education include Director of the
Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research
from 2011 to 2015 and Associate Dean Tjilbruke Teaching and Learning
within Flinders’ Office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement between
2015 and 2017.
Agli Zavros-Orr is an academic who advocates for an ethic of just-care in
educative contexts from an anti-bias approach. Agli is the founder of
diversitywise.com.au and undertakes advocacy and activist role within the
Victorian Intersex Expert Advisory Group (IEAG), is the chair for Intersex
Human Right Australia (IHRA), and Victorian Representative for Intersex
Peer Support Australia (IPSA).
List of Figures
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Abstract Story and storying have long held a compelling symbolic place
in social movements. We begin by sharing who we (Tracey and Louise) are
in story and social movements. We then set the scene for the book, with
our conceptualisation of storying movement by drawing from a/historical
and theoretical threads of stories, storytelling, activism, body, community,
and collective agency and how they knot together offering differing con-
figurations and wisdoms for being human. How story and movement hold
a long, entangled history together is discussed, elaborating on the five
principles we spoke for in storying research. We locate storying social
movements in new social movement theory as networked and collective
identities creating social change through story, told with words and bod-
ies. The power of dance in storying social movement is highlighted
through illustrations as the movement of social movements, provoking the
T. Bunda
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland,
St Lucia, QLD, Australia
e-mail: t.bunda@uq.edu.au
L. G. Phillips (*)
Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University, Bilinga, QLD, Australia
e-mail: louise.phillips@scu.edu.au
• Storying nourishes thought, body and soul—not always good and com-
forting, but rather nourishment that strengthens human integrity,
broadening worldly understandings of the plights of others, so we
empathise, question biases and injustices and are motivated to act.
• Storying claims voice in the silenced margins—to hear their lived reali-
ties. Social movements are propelled by stories from those who have
experienced the silenced injustice that the movement cam-
paigns against.
• Storying is embodied relational meaning-making—in that in hearing
stories of injustices, we feel their pain, and come to understand the
lived effect of the injustice, we come to know through hearts and
minds coalescing.
• Storying intersects the past and present as living oral archives—so that
audiences come to feel and understand the injustice/s in the now.
• Storying enacts collective ownership and authorship—of the move-
ment, in which individual and collective stories illustrate the collec-
tive movement.
happen, but the successful ones all begin with the particulars of people’s
lives and follow them down into our shared root systems’ (p. 42). Social
movements work with ‘stories that show resistance’; ‘expose the underpin-
nings of domination’; ‘crack open lies and make complacency intolerable’;
‘build trust, allow catharsis, honour grief, validate rage, offer unexpected
and heart-melting examples of solidarity and bestow courage’ (Morales,
2019, pp. 42–43). Stories in social movements are carefully crafted with
consideration as to, what is ‘the most effective way to change how people
around us think?’ (Morales, 2019, p. 46). Organisers in collaboration with
others identify the story to tell to provoke audiences to ‘see different pos-
sibilities and make new choices. Doing this well means listening more than
making speeches—really hearing the narratives people are living by’
(Morales, 2019, p. 45). Such deep listening and motivation to organise for
activism involves ‘analyzing, creating, and disseminating stories, and doing
so with courage, keenness, skill, and cunning, with the clear purpose of
changing human consciousness in the direction of choosing justice—this
is what organizing is all about’ (Morales, 2019, p. 46).
For these reasons, we see story and storying as key catalysts and actions
in social movements.
Movement as Activism
In storying social movements, we are locating with activist work of what is
referred to as new social movement theory, that arose from post-1960s
social movements, networked or ‘disorganized’ movements, and collective
identities creation, with roots and connections to feminist theory, anar-
chist studies, geographies of resistance, labour movement history, sexual-
ity studies, political elements of cultural studies, queer studies, postcolonial
theory, dance and music activist studies, and race and ethnicity studies (see
Jordan et al., 2002). We see that the real grit of scholarship in social move-
ments is forged by organisers, and so we have invited organisers creating
social change through story as the honourable authors for this edited col-
lection. In a true commitment to storying, this book brings to the fore,
the blood, sweat, and tears of the lived realities of social movements. The
stories told across the following six chapters breathe the “who-ness” of
peripheral peoples, highlighting their uniqueness as political agents’
(Forment, 1996, p. 314). As political philosopher Hannah Arendt
(1958/1998) proposed, we can only know who somebody is by knowing
the story in which she or he is the hero, that is in which they show the
8 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS
courage and ‘willingness to act and speak’, ‘to insert oneself into the
world’ (p. 186). The invited authors speak from experience of ‘willingness
to act and speak’ for and with peoples on the peripheries of dominant
society. They have demonstrated extraordinary wilfulness to create change
that has captured our attention and we feel deserve further attention
through publication in this book.
We see that central to the activism of social movements is wilfulness. As
feminist theorist Sara Ahmed (2014) traced feminist, queer, and antiracist
her/histories as being ‘those who are willing to be wilful’ (p. 134) citing
Alice Walker’s (2005) description of womanist as ‘outrageous, audacious,
courageous or wilful behaviour’ (p. xi) and Marilyn Frye’s (1992) descrip-
tion of radical feminism as ‘wilful creation of new meaning’ (p. 9) to name
a sample. Willing to be wilful. Wilfulness in ‘politics might involve not
only being willing to not go with the flow but be willing to cause its
obstruction’ (Frye, 1992, p. 161). A wilfulness to not be submerged in
the flow of dominant identities and ways of being, and to block those
flows through striking, as wilful bodies blocking traffic and economies. ‘A
history of wilfulness is a history of those who are willing to put their bod-
ies in the way, or to bend their bodies in the way of the will’ (Frye, 1992,
p. 161). As Rebecca Solnit (2003) writes, ‘Activism is not a journey to the
corner store; it is a plunge into the dark’. By this, Solnit (2003) is inferring
to the sensation of stepping into the unknown, of being wilful and straying
from or resisting the pack.
Collective identity is central to social movements and from a new social
movement position, particularly from a feminist and critical race theoreti-
cal position, we see collective identity as fundamentally political. The col-
lective identities of the social movements featured in this book we see as
‘fluid and relational’, involving acts of ‘perception and construction’
(Polletta & Jasper, 2001, p. 298). We recognise that this book fixes words
to pages at a point in time, but the words to define each social movement
will continue to be redefined according to circumstance, context, and
membership, ‘group definitions have no life of their own, and they are
constantly changing rather than static’ (Whittier, 1995, p. 15). ‘Any col-
lective identity developed in any movement must make space for a range
of standpoints, which may in turn be debated and contested as a part of
these processes’ (Maddison & Shaw, 2014, p. 418). Such is the liveliness
of the organic nature of social movements that stories can tell. No one
story can universally reveal the ‘who-ness’ of a social movement, but one
story can provoke an interest in the movement and an appetite for more.
1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 9
The moving body relates to the moved body, whether or not political-legal
structures are in place to enable this relationship and sustain this relational-
ity. Those moments of shared empathy enable the recognition through the
1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 11
body of the underly- ing assumption of the human rights doctrine: that all
human beings are equal in dignity. (Mills, 2017, pp. 114–115)
We also see critical race theory (CRT) as being well situated with learn-
ing through social movements. Critical Race Theory (CRT) developed
among African American scholars (Delgado & Stefancic, 2005) to make
visible the power of whiteness in the everyday experiences of being black.
This theoretical work has translatability in the Australian context given
that persistent colonial constructions of race permeate the formation of
relations between Aboriginal and white peoples. The translatability, how-
ever, differentiates at the point at which Aboriginal ontological relation-
ships are defined in country. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1998) has argued that,
CRT allows for understanding how race and racism are constructed and
embedded throughout societal institutions to create inequities. A key
component of CRT is found in the use of storytelling, for unmasking and
exposing racism, as an aspect of developing a CRT standpoint. The three
Aboriginal women’s stories included in this edition, read through the
CRT lens, are giving voice to their lived realities and for imagining other
ways of being. CRT has however been under attack with conservative
Australian Senator Pauline Hanson calling for the rejection of CRT from
the national curriculum (Anderson & Gatwiri, 2021). Her call follows the
US trend whereby 22 legislatures sought to ban CRT as a divisive element
in learning (Wong, 2021). Imagined senses that too much attention is
being paid to Aboriginal stories of colonisation, dispossession, and
Aboriginal truth-telling are the counter-stories that need to be heard, to
be moved from the margins to the centre.
Counter-storying in transformative critical pedagogy and critical educa-
tion studies has brought stories of gender, race, sexuality, and ability iden-
tity politics in social movements more into the public domain and in social
movement theory (understood as new social movements theory1). And
more recently intersectionality between domains of identity politics are
mobilised and researched, for which Terriquez (2015) offers the term
intersectional mobilization.
In the book, Children in Social Movements, Rodgers (2021) argues that
children have been a long-overlooked force in race, gender, sexuality, and
ability in social movements. Assumptions that children do not have ratio-
nal thought and agency have invisibilised their presence in political science
broadly (Bühler-Niederberger, 2010) and specific analyses of social move-
ments. Rodgers (2021) proposes that recognising children’s agency (as
does the sociology of childhood literature) and participation in social
movements enables greater understanding of the larger concept of agency
and social movements. Especially if social movements are recognised as
pedagogical through the collaborative, iterative, and dialogic processes as
Freire et al. described as ‘a pedagogy of desire’ (2007, p. 5), that is politi-
cal desire and dreams and an education of longing in a Pedagogy of Heart
(1997). Social movements desire and long for social change. Pedagogues
in social movements convoke radical imagination (Webb, 2019). Storying
of lived activism and imagined futures can do that. Recent works
published by Australian activists Sally Rugg (How powerful we are, 2019
1
Earlier social movements theory was largely class-based and framed by Marxism.
1 STORYING: THE VITALITY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 13
on the marriage equality campaign) and Jean Hinccliffe (Lead the way,
2021 on School Strikes 4 Climate movement) were written to document
and share their activism learning in making systemic change happen.
Overview of Chapters
We are all women as authors brought together in this book. We recognise
that women across the world, across history have and continue to be mar-
ginalised and silenced. Though none of the chapters are specifically on
women’s issues, the thread of recognition of women’s lived realities is
present through our authorship as women of across ages, black, white,
Jewish, and Cypriot migrant heritage. Across the time of curating this
edited collection, we have come to know these authors’ extraordinary pas-
sion, advocacy, and activism deeply and respectfully. We graciously honour
the stories they have shared. They are gifts that we think and know with,
in which ‘relations of thinking and knowing require care’ (Puig de la
Bellacasa, 2012, p. 198). We care for the authors, their stories, and the
movements they tell. We care that these stories are heard, so that more
empathise with the causes, and those who are affected by the injustices
build strength from knowing they are not alone.
In Chap. 2, Simone Tur, activist and academic, tells of the Irati Wanti
anti-nuclear campaign, a remembering of the fight to maintain sover-
eignty, to sustain Country as the specified tracts of land that determine
connection and identity, and to fight for Aboriginal people’s rights. The
Irati Wanti Anti-Nuclear Campaign is an important story that cannot be
left to linger unknown and unheard particularly when the world is so chal-
lenged by environmental and political instability. Here is an example of
Senior Aboriginal women fighting to protect Country for the spiritual
essence it provides in protecting stories. These Senior Aboriginal women
stand up in Country, as sovereign Aboriginal women do to speak against
uranium mining and political and economic indifference to the
consequences.
In Chap. 3, Ella Simons, youth climate change activist stories how her
location and ancestry shaped her commitment to the climate justice move-
ment from her late primary school years. Her story is a story of becoming
an activist, organiser, and media spokesperson, as a child and school stu-
dent with reduced access to civic institutions and independence.
In Chap. 4, Mariaa Randall, Kooriographer/choreographer, fore-
grounds embodied Aboriginal knowledges as the foundation for
14 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS
References
Ahmed, S. (2014). Willful subjects. Duke University Press.
Anderson, L., & Gatwiri, K. (2021, June 22). The Senate has Voted to Reject
Critical race Theory from the National Curriculum. The Conversation. https://
theconversation.com/the-s enate-h as-v oted-t o-r eject-c ritical-r ace-t heory-
from-the-national-curriculum-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter-163102
Arendt, H. (1958/1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). The University of
Chicago Press.
Bannerman, H. (1999). An overview of the development of Martha Graham's
movement system (1926–1991). Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for
Dance Research, 17(2), 9–46.
Bühler-Niederberger, D. (2010). Introduction: Childhood sociology—Defining
the state of the art and ensuring reflection. Current Sociology, 58(2), 155–164.
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (Eds.). (2005). The Derrick Bell Reader. NYU Press.
Dixon, N. (1998, December 2). Behind the gumboot dance. Green left. (343).
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/behind-gumboot-dance
Eyerman, R., & Jamison, E. (1991). Social movements: A cognitive approach.
Pennsylvania State University Press.
Forment, C. A. (1996). Peripheral peoples and narrative identities: Arendtian
reflections on late modernity. In S. Benhabib (Ed.), Democracy and difference:
Contesting the boundaries of the political (pp. 314–330). Princeton University
Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1nxcvsv.
Freire, P. (1974). Education for critical consciousness. Sheed & Ward.
Freire, P. (1997). Pedagogy of the Heart. Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-1039-1.
Freire, P., Macedo, D., & Freire, A. M. A. (2007). Daring to Dream: Toward a
Pedagogy of the Unfinished (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/
9781315635309
Frye, M. (1992). Willful virgin: Essays in feminism, 1976–1992. Crossing Press.
16 T. BUNDA AND L. G. PHILLIPS
Simone Tur
S. Tur (*)
Flinders University, Bedford Park, SA, Australia
e-mail: simone.tur@flinders.edu.au
1
Person in Yankunytjatjara language.
2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 21
Indigenous activism within Australia is associated with the fight for rec-
ognition of Indigenous people’s rights, connection to Country, and sov-
ereignty. The Irati Wanti Anti-Nuclear Campaign is such an example of
Senior Aboriginal women fighting to protect their Country as a sovereign
right. The following story reflects these struggles and successes and
addresses questions of: What does it mean to become knowledgeable from
an Anangu woman’s community standpoint, and does activism inform
Indigenous decolonising praxis? In this chapter, I acknowledge the Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuta and particularly my Senior Knowledge Holders, many
of whom have now passed away: Kunmanara Crombie, Kunmanara
Brown, Kunmanara Watson, Kunmanara Wonga, Kunmanara Stuart,
and members who are still campaigning, Ngunytju4 Emily Munyungka
Austin and Kami5 Lallie Lennon. I also acknowledge all the Kungkas6 and
their activism who have passed and those who continue to protect their
Country: my late Mother Mona Ngitji Ngitji Tur, Kamuru Lester, Kami
Lucy Lester, Rose Lester and Karina Lester, and the Yankunytjatjara
Native Title Corporation. I also acknowledge Umoona Aged Care at
Coober Pedy for their ongoing support in my research when I spent time
with my Waltjapiti7 at the aged care centre.
2
The poison, leave it in Yankunytjatjara language
3
The Many Women from Coober Pedy in Yankunytjatjara language
4
Mother in Yankunytjatjara language.
5
Grandmother, great aunt in Yankunytjatjara language.
6
Women in Yankunytjatjara language.
7
Extended or full family, groups, or gathering of relations in Yankunytjatjara language.
22 S. TUR
Learning by Example
This chapter follows in the footsteps of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, Irati
Wanti campaign, and the Senior Anangu Women’s activism. I critically
reflect on the significance of inter-generational transmission of knowledge
activism as part of an Embodied Activist Pedagogy. I discuss how the
ontology of Ngapartji-Ngapartj8 grounded my participation in The
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission authorized by the South Australian
Government in 2016, as a responsibility within my community context,
which honoured the teaching of the Senior Women and their campaign.
What follows is a collective story: words embedded with memories, and
knowledge past and present which is ethical—as it should be—and embod-
ied in my telling, through word and action. This story is not possible
without the knowledge, guidance wisdom and activism of those acknowl-
edges above and the many others who share and contribute their stories.
8
Mutual Reciprocation; In return; later I’ll give you something in return, give and give-in-
return in Yankunytjatjara language.
2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 23
These features and the overall purpose outlined here are certainly true,
but Indigenous activism requires one step more.
Allen and Noble’s descriptions of activism are a beneficial reference
point in analysing the Irati Wanti campaign. However, for Indigenous
activists within their Country, I would argue that sovereignty through
connection to and ‘caring as Country’ (Rigney & Hemming, 2014) is a
critical characteristic to add to their definitions. Aboriginal accounts of
activism as ‘Indigenous sovereign acts’ performed as part of complex and
obligatory caring practices within Australia are important to the broader
intellectual contribution made by Indigenous people to civil discourse.
Allen and Noble (2016) and Ollis (2012) offer beneficial critiques; how-
ever, analysis of activism through ‘race’, racialisation, and white race privi-
lege within Australia (Moreton-Robinson, 2000; Nicoll, 2007;
Tannoch-Bland, 1998)—as identified discourses of social justice and
human rights critique—is needed to understand activism as necessary
Indigenous sovereign practice. Its connection to the concept of caring ‘as’
Country takes readings of activism into what has been referred to else-
where as Black space.
The Irati Wanti campaign, for example, has contributed to bridging
the gap between generic activist practices and methods and Indigenous-
specific activist objectives of putting First Peoples first. In doing so, it has
been influential statewide, nationally, and internationally in shaping the
expression and what I call the ‘performance’ of public policy—in this case,
around the disposal of nuclear waste as a matter of infringement of Anangu
and therefore Indigenous sovereignty.
The Irati Wanti campaign is about human rights globally, uranium
mining, and nuclear waste storage, beginning from the position of ‘locat-
edness’ and extending its influence beyond one, to many, locations. This
is at once a local and an international matter. In the Kupa Piti Kungka
Tjuta resistance, they show that the local must meet global world issues in
relation to nuclear energy, mining, and storage. Whether through ‘silent’
activism, protests, public discourse on injustices, film, or creative praxis
activism, such ‘acts’ are always political. Performing activism is not with-
out its risks, or its losses, but activism can change lives and be life-changing.
The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta demonstrate this grounded commitment to
their community and their conceptualisation of nation and nations. In the
Kungkas’ words: We lost our friends. Never mind we lost our loved ones.
We never give up. Been through too much. Too much hard business and
still we keep going. Sorry business all the time. Fought through every hard
24 S. TUR
thing along the way. People trying to scare us from fighting, it was hard
work, but we never stopped. When we were going to Sydney, people say,
“You Kungkas cranky, they might bomb you”, but we kept going (Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuṯa, 2005, p. 116).
A group of Senior Aboriginal Women can make a change. Here is their
story: it is the act of raising awareness as a sovereign, located, embodied,
and ‘performed’ activist pedagogy.
From the start of the announcement, the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta said
‘NO’. Irati Wanti—‘The poison, leave it’. This was grounded in the
Senior Women’s knowledge and responsibility to and ‘as’ Country and a
result of direct family effects from the Maralinga atomic bomb tests
(1950–1960s) (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 78) on their
waltjapiti (family), Country, physical and spiritual well-being. The
Kungkas spoke out and did not stop telling their stories. They said:
We take our responsibilities very seriously toward: the land, the Country,
some of the special places, we know them the Tjukur9—the important sto-
ries of the land the songs that prove how the land is the Inma-song and
dance of the culture, all part of the land as well the bush tucker that we
know and do our best to teach the grandchildren, and even tourists when we
have the chance preserving the traditional crafts; the wira- wooden bowl,
wana-digging stick, punu-music sticks, and even kali-boomerang, that our
grandmothers have passed down to us through generations the language the
9
Story, Dreaming in Yankunytjatjara language.
2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 25
family, that members have respect for one another. ‘All this is law’. (Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 6)
These strong words, almost like a manifesto, make clear to the listener
the responsibility and deep knowledge of Country, and the importance of
inter-generational knowledge transmission as ‘embodied’ and enacted
sovereignty.
Audre Lorde (1980) says:
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to
me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it
bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any
other effect.
The Kungka Tjuta did not accept they were powerless to change the course
of the waste repository project ‘the government’ planned to impose on
them. Talking and travelling became methods of articulating counter-
narratives, which radically disrupted the federal government’s unconvincing
story. The counter-narratives resonated with many non-Indigenous
Australians and forced an epistemological contest between different ways of
knowing the Country. (Vincent, 2007b, p. 164)
26 S. TUR
Dear Jawoyn People, Hello. We are the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta. We are the
Senior Aboriginal Cultural Women in Coober Pedy, South Australia. We are
dropping you a line to let you know about our struggle against the uranium
and how we are standing up strong for our Country. We are writing to let
you know that uranium is dangerous and not to give them the right of way.
(Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 44)
From International peace walks (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown,
2005, p. 98) and road trips, to festivals, postcards, and posters, to letters
to politicians, the Kungkas were ‘talking straight out’: ‘initiating or join-
ing action groups, protests, boycotts and campaigns to bring about
change’ (Allen & Noble, 2016, p. 2).
Echoing Vincent’s (2007a) words, the Kungka Tjuta weren’t power-
less. In fact, the Kungkas became strategic lobbyists who formed many
important relationships, connections, and networks with communities of
2 LEARNING WITH KUPA PITI KUNGKA TJUTA ACTIVISM 27
like-minded individuals and groups who held and supported their perspec-
tive on caring for Country and anti-nuclear philosophy and action. The
Kungkas understood the importance of collective views. The Kungkas
called on Sister Michele Madigan to support the administration of the
Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta as an incorporated body (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa
& Brown, 2005, p. 6). They were able to voice and promote their con-
cerns to local politicians (such as the ‘greenies’ as the Kungkas called
them) and organisations such as Friends of the Earth (p. 16). They spoke
at public events and conferences, such as the 1998 Global Survival and
Indigenous Rights conference in Melbourne and, following this confer-
ence, formed a strong alliance with a group of ‘young non-Aboriginal
women’ from whom the Kungkas sought support. They came to be known
as the ‘Melbourne Kungkas’ (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown,
2005, p. 20).
The outcome of the Irati Wanti campaign was successful. In July 2004,
the government abandoned its plans, and this resulted in legislation being
introduced in South Australia to prohibit the construction, operation, and
importation of nuclear facilities, storage, and waste. The Irati Wanti cam-
paign was fundamentally about Indigenous and human rights, and politi-
cians and the public recognised that (Allen & Noble, 2016, p. 2). The
success of the Irati Wanti campaign led to changes in state legislation.
Sections from the South Australian Nuclear Waste Storage Facility
(Prohibition) Act 2000, Acts 8, 9, and 13 of the legislation listed below
show this:
The Kungkas’ response expressed the truth: ‘We are winners because of
what’s in our hearts’ (Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuṯa & Brown, 2005, p. 12).
who are oppressed, but also for those for whom hegemony has been
‘naturalised’.
The Irati Wanti campaign demonstrates the lived, inter-generational
experience of that necessity: that knowledge of and being in Country are
important; that nuclear waste storage is unhealthy; that harming the
manta 10 means that ‘our’ ancestral, spiritual, and physical well-being is
affected; that telling your story is important in the praxis of activism; that
an Indigenous Embodied Activist Pedagogy does offer counter-knowledges
(through counter-narratives) to those preferred by dominant systems.
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